GLP v EHRC judgement is coming tomorrow

[DownhillTeaTray]

Listing in the Administrative Court for tomorrow not before 11am: read out of the judgment in our challenge to the EHRC Interim Guidance.

https://bsky.app/profile/goodlawproject.org/post/3meo6ow7ow22k

That judgment as I understand it was that to be allowed to exclude anybody, legally, one of the protected characteristics had to be involved. There is no means to say 'women' means 'women' in the biological single sex sense, and to then add some men but not others.

I think the reality is that trying to imagine the situation where some men could be excluded from mixed sex toilets is a bit 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin'.

Effectively any establishment that provides 'inclusive' toilets is just providing mixed sex toilets from which it would be very difficult to exclude any man.

The argument is then just over the extent to which services have a duty to provide single sex toilets and the design of mixed sex and unisex facilities.

So nothing new here.

I'm not saying it's all magically sorted out, but it hasn't got any worse, and that's a win in my book.

I'd guess that she is karyotypically and gonadally male with at least some androgen sensitivity. Nevertheless she is legally biologically female and can only be excluded from female spaces on practical grounds, not because of her sex. Such people are very rare so don't advance the debate at all. I was pissed off with JM because she had perfectly good legal routes out of her difficulty but he didn't tell her that, instead involving her in a case which she didn't need him to win (FWS didn't change the position of people like her at all).

Is there publicly available evidence that men aren’t happy with trans men using the toilets?

In the Darlington case Jo Phoenix gave evidence about the issues for women of having trans women in their spaces. I didn’t think there would be similar evidence the other way round, but I’d be interested to read it if there is.

very sad that some trans men feel pressurised by their own ideology to use the mens

They also require (not allow) trans exclusive toilets, no matter how many temper tantrums get thrown. And this, in the end, is the problem. The Powers That Be don't have the backbone to say, quite possibly for the first time in many of the protesters lives 'No means no.' Not saying 'no' to your child leads to this. The little dears need boundaries, if only for the fun of pushing them. Not that I ever did or do that. No. No way at all. Of course not. Or only a little bit.

That judgment as I understand it was that to be allowed to exclude anybody, legally, one of the protected characteristics had to be involved.

You mean like saying ‘whites only’?

No, because the EA does not permit exclusion based on race.

Where is that one of the protected characteristics?

The SCJ explains all this very clearly. If you have the need to provide a facility or service for one group only, because the benefit or purpose to that group is damaged if it is a universally accessible one, then you are using legal discrimination. You can only do this for the nine protected characteristics in law. If you then admit others outside of that characteristic you have lost the legal footing to be able to use that legal discrimination protection.

Race is a protected characteristic.

But that is the point - there has to be an exemption in order to discriminate on the grounds of any PC. There are exemptions for sex.

And what’s the legitimate aim you think you’d be achieving?

If you were creating a group for say, Somalian women because you were aware of a specific need that group had, and were using both the criteria of race and sex, then I can't see any possible legal grounds to object that as a Russian woman you were being discriminated against.

I don't honestly think the law is going to work in the same way for a white supremacist group in any rational court, do you? But do feel free to set one up and try it out in the legal system, I'll be interested to follow the case.

The SCJ is an easy read, I'd suggest checking your facts there.

The judge's musings open up the possibility that a trans-inclusive association could legally exist, even though it doesn't meet the Schedule 16 criterion of members having a shared protected characteristic (sex, in this instance). It would need to show that no group is less favoured overall, so it's an extreme hypothetical: he's really just saying that it's not axiomatic that single-gender spaces must remain single-sex in order to be legal, because the SSEs in the act are not the only ways of treating people equally favourably (and the Act doesn't require identical outcomes, but equally favourable treatment).

Clearly I was being provocative with ‘whites only’ but if we accept Somali women can have specific needs, why can’t we accept that white working class men also can? But those are about groups not toilets or changing rooms.

Quite. Not on topic, I take your point.

Schedule 16 permits all associations having members with a shared protected characteristic, except skin colour.

Somali women ✅️

Black women ❎️

Is "Somali" a race, by the scientific definition ?

(Or, to add to the mix, Is Somali a "race", by the scientific definition ? )

'White' is not a protected category in the Equalities Act; whereas 'Sex' is - and for good reason. Women and girls regardless of their other characterstics ( race, religion, disability etc) are all female - and so subject to the same sorts of vulnerabilities and deviant male behaviours as each other.

I know, it's bloody knackering.

On the other hand, it's the posts like yours plugging away, grimly determined, that is turning it round.

But yes, the reason, certainly in my opinion, it has been allowed to get so far is because it's a men's sexual rights movement, so even people who don't really agree with it give it a pass.

Somalian would be an ethnicity, surely, not a race.

Changing one madey uppy thing for another doesn't really help though 😀

Using this argument, does the equally favourable treatment need to be provided within the organisation? In theory could girl guides argue that a boy who wanted to take part was not being discriminated against because he could join another similar organisation, or would girl guides need to include boys but do activities with girls + some boys on Tuesday and boys + some girls on Thursday?

It's a nationality.

Race is a protected characteristic, but the protected characteristics aren't all treated in the same way in the EA.

In schools it's still up to parents to speak up as children are relentlessly being coerced into accepting the unacceptable.

Any man (no matter how he identifies) going into the female sleeping accommodation is in danger of being accused of voyeurism - especially if any of the girls are undressing.

It's time to close down the free pass these men have been given in relation to girls and safeguarding. The sex crimes of voyeurism and indecent exposure are accepted as being gateway offences. Any parent finding out that a male teacher not honest about their sex and accompanying children on a residential, must ask for reassurance that their daughter won't be confronted by him in changing rooms, toilets, showers and dormitories.